Google Drive and all its components: I cannot say enough good things about Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Forms...the possibilities are endless!

Google Earth Voyages: fantastic for virtual field trips or to just add a little extra "oomph" to your lesson

Google Hangouts: Conduct meetings even when you're not in the same room! I love the "share my screen" feature, which allows me to let teachers see what my screen looks like as I walk them through a project

Google Voice: gives you an extra phone number that connects to your existing mobile number. Great for making parent phone calls or texts without revealing your personal phone number.

Sign Up Genius: I used this when I taught Science Lab to gather volunteers for stations during Science Night. Since then, I've seen it used for potluck lunches, field trip volunteers, and mystery reading guest sign-ups.

Socrative: a digital assignment tool where any amount of planning will work

Symbaloo: Out of all the ways to share links with students, this one is probably the easiest and most universal.

TweetDeck: schedule your tweets in advance and keep up with Twitter chats more easily

Wifi Mouse: an iOS app that works over Wifi to connect to your computer and act as a mouse, letting you control your computer screen from anywhere in the room

​Pretty handy, huh? You can create keyboard shortcuts for anything you want, but it's obviously most helpful to create shortcuts for things you type fairly often.

On personal devices, that might mean you create shortcuts for various e-mail addresses you have, a long word or phrase you use often, your full name {to be used as a signature or when filling out forms}, etc.

On student devices, it might look a little different. For instance, if you use utilize Read Naturally, you may have noticed that the latest update doesn't save the 8-digit access code students have to use to get in the program. If you're okay with students seeing {and potentially memorizing} that number and you want to save a little time during the login process, you may consider creating a keyboard shortcut for that 8-digit access code. Or if, for instance, your very young learners {who tend to take several minutes to type one word} all have the same password, maybe you want to create a keyboard shortcut for that password.

{Note: I don't recommend using keyboard shortcuts for passwords for anyone other than very young learners. Even then, it is purely in the interest of time so that you regain as many instructional minutes as possible!}

If you're interested in setting up your own shortcuts on iOS devices, follow the directions in the screenshots below:

After you click "save" in the upper right corner, you'll be free to use your iOS keyboard shortcut.To test it, go into the "Notes" app and type the shortcut you specified earlier. The phrase should automatically pop up, as it did in my example video.

Happy typing! :)

Note: iOS keyboard shortcuts work in almost any app and in almost any web form, but please be aware that there are a select few applications the shortcuts are not compatible with.